Day 24 – A Song You Want to Play At Your Funeral

I believe it to be fairly obvious that I have absolutely no intentions of dying, ever. I’ve written before about how I will have my brain implanted into a robot body in order to not only avoid death but to gain an ultimate understanding of the universe. That’s just my bag, baby. Of course my immortality as a cloud of nanobots doesn’t entirely prevent my family from morning my passing, so I can understand why they would still want to have a funeral for me, which I would of course attend, possibly in the form of a penguin or unicorn. You know, something that would really make them think, “WTF, Mate?”

Of course, the purpose of a funeral has very little to do with the dead person in the casket. Generally speaking, outside of a truly elaborate hoax, they aren’t very likely to be aware of what is going on anyway. My personal, spiritual beliefs lead me to think that once a person’s corpse is laying there, they really don’t care what we do with it at all, and my preferred way of dealing with death is to celebrate the life of that person, even if it is REALLY hard to do that sometimes.

After all, funerals are a completely selfish act, entirely designed to assuage the pain of the bereaved. That is a good thing, because the guest of honor doesn’t have to worry about those sorts of things anymore, and unless they were a completely dick, wouldn’t want us all suffering on their behalf.

That’s why, on the off chance that I do die in a freak accident or something before the robot body upgrade, I’ve put together some of my own wishes for my funeral, most of which will probably be completely ignored.

1) Cremation – I don’t understand why this isn’t a legal requirement already. Cemeteries take up a lot of space and pollute the environment with human rot. Plus, there is absolutely no chance of a person coming back as a pile of Zombie Dust. The worst you can have here is dirty ghost.

2) Open Bar – My friends are drunks, give them cheap booze and they won’t even miss me by midnight.

3) Viking Funeral – After you’ve made sure I’m 100% ash, and thus ensuring that I can not ever become a zombie, or hemophiliac’s new friend, put my ashes in a boat and burn it on a lake. The best part of doing it this way is not only do you ensure I burn up completely, but you only have to burn a tiny little toy boat. Added bonus: put little models of my stuff in the toy boat with me, that way you honor the full ritual and get to keep my stuff.

4) After everyone is drunk and my remains are scattered by fire across a lake, making it completely impossible for any of you to desecrate them, then you made read my journal of letters to be delivered after I die. Preferably out loud while they are all assembled. This gives me the last laugh, you see. Some of them will feel warm and loved, and some of them will be publicly embarrassed. It’ll be just like I was still there.

Published by M.A. Brotherton

M.A. Brotherton is a writer, blogger, artist, and fat-kid from the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri. He’s tasted a little bit of everything the Midwest has to offer, ranging from meth-tweaking rednecks in massive underground cave complexes to those legendary amber waves of grain. When he’s not writing, he spends most of his time screwing around on the internet.